California State Stipend Program  -  Qualifying Schools for Educational Stipends


Since 2005 the Los Angeles County’s Department of Mental Health (County) has partnered with the MFT Consortium of Greater Los Angeles (formerly, the Southern California MFT Consortium) and Phillips Graduate Institute in recruiting MFT students for employment in the County’s mental health delivery system. The County awarded educational stipends to graduating MFT students. Stipend recipients were obligated to work for one year at a mental health agency operated or contracted by the Department of Mental Health as an MFT Intern. In the fourth year of this partnership (2008-09) the County awarded 72 educational stipends to MFT students from sixteen different MFT academic schools.

County Stipends Address Workforce Needs
The County stipend program for MFTs addressed the workforce need for practitioners who could provide services in a language other than English. In the last four years the percentage of stipend recipients with bilingual capacity ranged from 56 to 75. In addition, all of the stipend recipients had personal and work experience in the underserved communities of the county. “[T]his partnership has made considerable strides in addressing the need for diversity in mental health workforce as outlined in the LAC DMH Internal Inventory” according to a May 2008 report. For a copy of the full report click here.

County Stipend Information
The County will be awarding educational stipends to MFT students in 2009-10. The County is in the process of establishing the criteria and qualifications for this year’s stipends. Once this information is available, it will be provided in this website.